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NDP could win up to five times as many seats as Liberals, data suggests (with graphic)

Prediction tool lets you see how shifts in popular vote might translate into seats

B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix after the B.C. leaders' election debate in Vancouver on April 29, 2013. The B.C. NDP could win up to five times as many seats as the B.C. Liberals if current polling numbers hold, according to an online seat prediction tool created by The Vancouver Sun.

Photograph by: Mark van Manen
, PNG

The B.C. NDP could win up to five times as many seats as the B.C. Liberals if current polling numbers hold, according to an online seat prediction tool created by The Vancouver Sun.

Based on the most recent Angus Reid poll — which had the NDP at 45 per cent and the Liberals at 31 per cent — the tool predicts NDP leader Adrian Dix and his party would win 60 of the Legislature’s 85 seats.

In comparison, the Liberals would take just 23 seats and lose leader Christy Clark’s seat in Vancouver-Point Grey. Independent candidates would take two seats.

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And the situation for the Liberals looks even more dire if one uses figures from the Justason poll released just before the TV debate, which had the NDP at 49 per cent and the Liberals at 27.

Using those figures, the tool predicts the NDP winning a whopping 70 seats and the Liberals just 12, with another two for independent candidates and one for the Greens.

While simple, The Sun’s seat prediction tool does give some indication of how shifts in the popular vote could translate into seats in the Legislature.

And it suggests that, at their current low polling numbers, the Liberals are dangerously near a tipping point that, if they fall much further, could translate into a disastrous showing on May 14.

For example, the tool suggests that a relatively small drop in the Liberals’ share of the popular vote, from 31 per cent to 26 per cent, could translate into a drop in their seat total from 23 to just eight.

The tool illustrates how the NDP’s vote is more “efficient” than the Liberals’ because NDP candidates tend to win their seats by narrower margins.

For example, the tool suggests that if the NDP and Liberals were tied on May 14 with 40 per cent of the vote each, the NDP would still narrowly win the election, 43 seats to 40.

The tool also suggests the Greens and Conservatives need to dramatically increase their share of the vote — to 25 per cent or more, from their current 10 per cent — if they hope to win more than a seat or two.

The Sun’s online seat prediction tool is based on a relatively simple formula that predicts riding-by-riding results based on each party’s share of the popular vote and the parties’ vote totals in the 2009 provincial election.

For example, if you predict the Green party will win 10 per cent of the vote on May 14 — 25 per cent more than the 8 per cent they took in 2009 — the tool estimates the Greens’ vote total will increase by 25 per cent in all 85 ridings. However, if a party isn’t running a candidate in a riding, their total will remain zero no matter what their overall share of the popular vote is.

The tool does not take into account local factors that could affect the vote in a particular riding, such as whether an incumbent is running or if a party has a star candidate.

The tool required some special calculations for the Conservative party, because it only ran 24 candidates in the 2009 election, compared to the 60 candidates they have this year. Predicting the party’s showing based simply on its 2009 results would overstate their chances in those ridings where they ran a candidate in 2009 and understate their chances in those ridings where they didn’t.

To adjust for this, in those ridings where the Conservatives didn’t have a candidate in 2009 but do have one in 2013, the tool assumes a 2009 vote total of seven per cent, the average share of the vote the Conservatives received in ridings where they did run a candidate in 2009.

The seat prediction tool is available online at vancouversun.com. Readers can enter different vote-share scenarios and see how they might translate into seats won, as well as see which party is predicted to win in each specific riding.

The website also features an interactive map showing all of the places Dix and Clark have stopped so far during their leadership tours.

B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix after the B.C. leaders' election debate in Vancouver on April 29, 2013. The B.C. NDP could win up to five times as many seats as the B.C. Liberals if current polling numbers hold, according to an online seat prediction tool created by The Vancouver Sun.

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